Julius Peppers ranked 15th best athlete in NFL history Posted Jul 1, 2017 15. Julius Peppers: Plenty of contemporary NFL stars have some college basketball success in their past. Peppers carries the flag for the others because of his uniqueness. It's easy to see how catching entry passes qualifies a football player to catch touchdown passes in traffic, but harder to imagine how an alley-oop dunk converts into 143.5 sacks and counting. (Bleacher Report)